November 14, 2010

It struck me today how one bit of the Anglican Covenant remind me, mutatis mutandis, of the Charter of the United Nations, especially Article 6:

A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

The evocative and more verbose portion of the AngCov reads:

(4.2.5) The Standing Committee may request a Church to defer a controversial action. If a Church declines to defer such action, the Standing Committee may recommend to any Instrument of Communion relational consequences which may specify a provisional limitation of participation in, or suspension from, that Instrument until the completion of the process set out below.
(4.2.6) On the basis of advice received from the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates' Meeting, the Standing Committee may make a declaration that an action or decision is or would be “incompatible with the Covenant”.
(4.2.7) On the basis of the advice received, the Standing Committee shall make recommendations as to relational consequences which flow from an action incompatible with the Covenant...

2 comments:

The Anglican Communion is far from the United Nations and the Anglican Covenant is not anywhere close to the United Nations Charter. I know at least one of the drafters of the UN Charter and he was head and shoulders above those who wrote the Anglican Covenant both intellectually and spiritually, and he was a Quaker!

One thing that jumped off the page was that once again, here is where they are also, through the back door, trying to make the Primates Meeting more than it is.

I learned something this week I did not realize and I wonder if it is also true in other provinces. The AC in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia canonically only recognizes one Instrument of Communion (Unity), the ABC.

My Contribution to the Listening Process

"a book that honors the Word of God, the faith once delivered, and moves it into our cultural context."—The Episcopal New Yorker

"seeks to meet opponents on their own ground, assessing their arguments carefully and refuting them courteously.... The value ... lies not in its conclusions alone but chiefly in the way Haller reaches them. Whoever is charged with compiling ... resources [on same-sex relationships] will want to add this book to the list."— The Anglican Theological Review